Nightmare of providing wrong meter readings to FirstUtility

[Deleted User]

Totally my fault to begin with.

I've got a first utility account for gas/elec and I also set up one for mother-in-law. We've got a 4 bed house and use loads, she lives alone and doesn't use much.

Last summer it seems I entered our meter readings to her account - yes totally my fault.

She pays be DD - £60 per month - so I never checked the bills. I continued to enter correct meter readings (which were lower than incorrect ones I entered in the summer). These were rejected it seems.

So what happened is last summer, they generated a bill for £1200.

No-one noticed it was a bit irregular and no-one even tried to tell her to increase DD. It just stayed at £60.

So now I noticed, phoned them and gave them the correct readings. That was before xmas.

Still waiting for them to cancel the bills and re-do. In the meantime, MIL is frantic to find out how much she owes and whether this £1200 is valid. (Yes maybe I should have kept quiet!).

I've tried to calculate it myself and, even though she only pays £60/month I think shes owed some money back.

Must admit though - not happy that First Utility are taking so long. Yes it was my fault but surely its not that hard to cancel bills and re-do.

filmcritic

I did exactly the same last year and it took FU nearly 6 months to correct. Countless phone calls where they promise to resolve it and never did, made official complaint which got escalated and they finally resolved. Don't waste time calling just make official complaint through website as they have a certain time limit to resolve it before you can go to ombudsman with complaint. Good luck as you will need it

energyworker

Calculate the difference between the last correctly billed reading and what the meter says today. Times that by the unit price. Add the standing charge and you have the correct amount to be billed. Compare that to the payments that have been made and you can see where you stand.

Sadly due to the frankly archaic system of billing that the industry adheres to it is not simply a case of cancelling and bill and re-doing. They will have to contact Ecoes who hold a database of meter readings and ask them to amend the incorrect reading. This can take 28 days to get a response on regardless of how obvious it is that the meter reading was incorrect. I would email in to check that they have raised this correctly though. In this instance its kind of both sides at fault so I would just email and request them to confirm in writing the action taken and their proposed timescale for fixing it. If you only raised this before Christmas I'd say the current fix time seems reasonable.

Sadly most companies wont pick up on a high reading and will instead just blindly issue a bill. Generally it will only be flagged if you enter a low reading or one that is moving backwards. If its high they'll just assume you've opened a cannabis farm.